Growing up the house was full of music. My dad was a part time DJ in our local town, just playing pubs and weddings and things like that. This was the late 80's early 90's, and he had a huge collection of vinyl. Chicago House, Rave, Drum & Bass, Jungle, Techno, Pop, Rock... loads of stuff. I even remember a bunch of times we'd go out to parties and things, and he'd DJ for them.
My family was very poor, but even so, I remember having a dual record player in my room when I was a kid. This was our Sorrell Road house, and we moved to the North in 1992, so this would've been 1990 or 1991 I guess. I even had a few small records of my own; some absolute dross, like the Superman song, and Pat Sharp (kids TV presenter who did a song lmao!) ... but they were great, and I rinsed them!
My first experience of "mixing" was playing the same song on two ghetto blasters in two different rooms in our house, and walking between them. I tried so hard to get them to sync up! Even asked my sister to press play on one tapedeck while I pressed play on the other. Wow, I'd kinda forgotten about that until now.
There was a family over the road from our house, and they were kind of scruffy people who always had stuff coming through the house. Somehow I ended up with a keyboard from them, a small little Casio or maybe even Yamaha thing. Again, this would've been 1990/1991. I would've been 6 or 7 I suppose. I played that thing a lot. Didn't do anything good, but it was around that age my interest in music began to develop.
My first experience trying to make music on a computer would've been when we did move up to the North in 1992. We had an Amiga 500, and some shareware version of Octamed. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but it felt like the future! I used to sit there tinkering with it. There were other programs like Dance Ejay, Hip Hop Ejay, Techno Ejay.. and I remember using those, but don't remember if it was before or after the next story.
The real key moment would've been my 14th birthday. My parents gave me £20, and I went down to this local shop called Entertainment Exchange. It was a shop where they sold all sorts of computer games, CD's, vinyl, posters, t-shirts, whatever.... just a little nerd shop that I suppose we all thought would be there forever. Had no idea how much the internet would decimate the high streets at that age.
Anyway, I saw this music box with the words "Acid Style" written on it. It was a cut-down version of a bit of software called Acid, by Sonic Foundry:
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I kid you not... this program opened up music for me in a way that was completely ... well, everything was just massively new to me. You could sequence loops, you could record audio snippets, you could add effects, you could mix tracks. I started making techno and drum and bass and stuff like that. My dad did too.
We'd spend ages making tracks. Never together really, but we'd compare our songs and he'd encourage me. I even recorded a few keyboard bits for him at one point, which he then mangled up into complete nonsense. It was really good fun.
Then when I was 15 my dad died. Massive heart attack. I watched the first half of it before he sent me back to school. I guess he didn't want me to see what he was going through.
Music to me is partly for myself, and partly for him. Somehow it helps me keep him alive in my mind. On some level.
From there... my interest in it just grew and grew and grew. I became really interested in electronic music, virtual instruments, DAW's, recording, mixing, producing.... that whole world.
I bought an acoustic guitar when I was 17. But it was right handed. I couldn't play it. The day I got it, I rock and roll smashed it up the wall in a pitiful sense of abject frustration (tm).
I bought a cheap upright piano and put it in the dining room at home. Didn't even think to ask my mum if it was okay. Just did it. I was so into the world of music and writing stuff that I thought about nothing else. Even had a girlfriend cheat on me because I didn't do anything other than play around with Reason making tunes.
Then a friend of mine goes "you know they make guitars left handed right?" - and that was like.... BINGO. I went and got one, and even though I was crap, I could basically already form chords and strum rhythms; partly thanks to my upbringing making music on a computer and playing keyboards.
But I didn't really get into guitar until I went to university aged 19. Anyway... it all rolled from there.
and buying some 90's rock stuff. I had friends who were playing acoustic and I was impressed by them playing classical gas, but it was Creed's One Last Breath that inspired me to pick up my mom's Yamaha acoustic and learn how to tune it in 2001. A year or so later I would discover Collective Soul and really got into electric guitar. I transferred from a state university to a smaller college that had some songwriters and was inspired to start writing songs.
